The increasing capability of computing system has routinely permitted program developers to attempt to add an ever-increasing number of features and options to application programs. Each of these features and options requires a user of the application program to interact with the application program to configure and use these features and options. As such, a user interface control has been needed to present users with a large number of control objects that may be selected. In addition, each of these control objects may individually have properties and settings that a user may wish to manipulate in order to achieve a desired result.
In the past, user interface controls have been constructed using dialog boxes that appeared when a user makes a selection of a control. Typically, a control was selected using function keys, drop-down menus, and right-mouse clicks on an object within a main application window. This selection operation caused a large dialog box or window to be presented to the user in which a control setting or property could be changed. Once a user has made a selection by either clicking upon a setting or highlighting a setting an clicking upon an “OK” or “DONE” button, the dialog box would disappear and the new setting or property would be applied to the appropriate object within the main application window.
This process is not an efficient use of a user's efforts in that a dialog box is presented and removed repeatedly if a user wishes to examine a plurality of possible choices while deciding which setting is actually desired. In addition, many selections themselves possess selectable properties that may need manipulation for a user to arrive at a desired set of properties to achieve the desired result. In the past, these additional properties would be controlled using a second, or settings, dialog box which is launched using a button located upon the first, or main, dialog box. A user would need to navigate through these multiple levels of dialog boxes and windows to set a control to be active and configured as desired.
With the opening of these dialog boxes, the main application window is typically obscured by the dialog box and the settings dialog box launched from the main dialog box. The screen is redrawn when the various dialog boxes are closed and the new control settings are applied. The above sequence of operations typically breaks the flow of a user as he or she interacts with a main application window which typically maintains the items of interest. The user will need to focus on these controls and dialog boxes, and not the main application window, and when the boxes are gone, refocus upon the main application window and any changes made by the application of the new control settings.
A new user interface control gallery addresses the limitations of the prior design for controls using dialog boxes by providing a user-selectable set of gallery control objects within a separate gallery control window.